My experiences as a new gardener in Zone 9, California. Supposedly, if you stick anything in the ground here, it will grow. However, I am a person who can kill the "immortal" jade plant. So we'll see how things pan out.

Monday, July 18, 2011

Harvest Monday July 18th

This was my best harvest week so far. The tomato plants and the squash vines are churning out a decent take almost daily. I have a lot of tomato plants this year because they managed to survive all the things that went wrong.

Below are the maroon tomatoes that are close to being my favorite variety this year (they tie with the funny bell pepper shaped ones). Unfortunately, neither variety reached me with a name. I will still save seeds.

I don't have a picture of the squash I harvested, but here is a simple dish I made with a couple. I sliced them into thin rounds and fried them in a little bit of butter and a sprinkle of seasoned salt. They were excellent. (The mystery object on the plate is a little onigiri, heated in the pan with a splash of soy sauce.) I had this for breakfast and call it Silver Dollar Squash.

Most of the tomatoes I picked got dried. I leave them rather juicy and store them in the freezer. They will be lovely memories of summer all winter. I want to try a bread dough with chopped dried tomatoes and rosemary. Mmm...

I also did some foraging. I stop by some unused land to gather forage for my rabbits. One place is along a chainlink fence that separates a sidewalk from a steep river bank. Wild grape grows over the fence, and the rabbits like that. Then I noticed that elderberry bushes also lean over the fence. I couldn't resist. I didn't gather enough for straight elderberry wine, but I will add these to a blend. This is what they'll be blended with. These plums come from an apartment complex my family owns. Ideally, fruit for wine should be perfectly ripe. I am not the best ripe-plum picker, probably because I prefer to eat plums with a little crunch left to them (I know, it's practically sacrilegious). So if you make wine, don't follow my example: pick your fruit perfectly ripe. I also picked some little plums from my ornamental plum tree (one of those with dark purple leaves). It produces dark red plums about twice the size of a cherry with a wonderfully intense, tart-sweet taste. I would absolutely make a wine exclusively from them if I could ever gather enough.